Electronics and Programming Guides

September 01, 2022 (Last Updated: March 06, 2023) | Reading Time: About 1 minute

Discover helpful and inciteful tips that you can use in your electronics and programming projects. We are focused on home-brew electronics, specifically for home automation. We like to use MQTT, Home Assistant, Node-RED, and Zigbee along with Node MCU and Arduino. With this combination of electronics and programming, you can automate anything.

We share some information about electronics fundamentals as well as knowledge about more advanced topics in electronics. It is very helpful to learn fundamentals such as Ohm's Law and resister networks when you are building home automation circuits.

Here you can find guides and articles with creative ideas, tips, and advice about programming, electronics, and home automation.

When you mix programming and electronics together you get fun.

EFUNDIES.com currently provides articles and guides related to electronics and programming. When our site update is complete, we plan to offer source code collaboration. We will also be adding guides and articles about home automation, so check in often to see our new projects.

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Analog power meter reading

How to Read Your Power Meter

Learn how to read your power meter and measure the energy consumption of various devices in your home.

You can get started programming with a simple setup. All it takes is a laptop and a cup of coffee.

Programming: Tips and Tricks

A collection of tips, tricks, and snippets of code for a variety of programming languages, including C#, AVR, Arduino, and Perl.

How To Quickly Create a OneNote Page from the Command Line

OneNote is a great tool for organizing your thoughts and keeping track of your work, and you can create a OneNote page directly from the command line.

This modern LED lightbulb consumes 1/10th the energy of old-school incandescent bulbs.

Electricity

Follow our electricity guides to learn how to read your power meter, save energy, and measure the power usage of various devices in your home.

Electronics topics include chips, capacitors, resistors, transistors, and building circuit boards.

Electronics

Our collection of electronics articles helps you get started in home automation and circuit building.

How to Adjust the Contrast of an Image in C#

Adjusting the contrast of an image in C# is an easy operation because it can be done on a single pixel at a time.

Your home automation server can run many different operating systems, including Ubuntu, Proxmox, Unraid, and TrueNAS.

Unraid vs Proxmox vs Ubuntu - Battle For the Best Home Network Server OS

When it comes time to put an operating system on your home network server, you've got a few options.

The newest addition to the Windows command prompt experience, Windows Terminal, is the best choice for most people.

Windows Command Prompt vs PowerShell

When it comes to comparing Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell, there are a few key differences.

MQTT is the backbone of many home automation systems.

MQTT

MQTT is the backbone of many home automation systems. We consider MQTT to be the most important part of your home automation system.

Mosquitto is one of the most popular open source MQTT brokers.

How To Set Up An MQTT Broker with Mosquitto

There are a few options to get your MQTT broker up and running, including Dockers and bare-metal installations. Let's talk about some of the most common ways to get your MQTT broker ready to go.

An MQTT broker helps glue your home automation systems together.

How To Choose an MQTT Broker: Mosquitto vs HiveMQ vs Home Assistant

When it comes time to choose an MQTT broker, you have a few choices. Let's check out the pros and cons of Mosquitto, HiveMQ, and Home Assistant's built-in MQTT broker.

If you want to conIf you want to connect to your MQTT broker from the internet, then you need to forward a port in your router.

Connect to Your MQTT Broker from the Internet: Port Forwarding MQTT

If you want to connect to your MQTT broker from the internet, then you need to forward a port in your router

Convert an Image to Gray Scale in C# - A Quick and Easy Guide

Sometimes you need to take a color image and remove all of the color from it leaving just shades of gray. There are 3 common ways of performing this calculation, each yielding slightly different results.

AVR microcontroler with printf function

AVR and printf

You should leave your STK500 setup exactly the same as it was setup for a previous guide.

This MIDI controller can be used to play music, write tracks in a DAW, or just about any home automation you can think of.

MIDI

You can use MIDI to write songs, play music, control games, or even control your home automations.

Introduction to the Command Line Interface: A Beginners Guide to Using the CLI

Introduction to the Command-Line Interface for Beginners

The command-line interface is a text-based interface that allows you to interact with your computer.

C# Color Object

Once you have a Color object you can easily get the RGB and HSB values out of it.

MIDI Controlled Solenoids with Arduino and Ableton Live - Part 2

This is part 2 in a 3 part series that shows how to make Ableton Live play music on electric solenoids using an Arduino.

How to Darken an Image in C#

In order to darken an image in C# you need to look at each pixel one at a time and decrease it's red, green, and blue values.

C#: How to Use HTML Colors in Your Code

The .Net framework has a great object for dealing with colors called Color that we use to deal with HTML color codes.

Resistors in Series

When you wire resistors in series, you can simply add their values together to get the new equivalent reistance.

5 Reasons You Should be Using Docker for Home Automation

If you are not using Docker on your home automation server, then it's time to start thinking about it.

AVR Port Input in C

### Connect PortB To Switches Remember how we connected **PORTA** to the **LEDS**. Now we are going to connect **PORTB** to the **SWITCHES**.

AVR USART Serial

If you've been following along in these guides, then your STK500 should be setup like this. .

How to Select the Right Resistor for Your Circuit: A Fundamentals Guide

The most important component to understand in electronics is the resistor.

Home automation can be fun with Node-RED and Home Assistant

Node-RED Makes Automation With Home Assistant Fun

Node-RED adds a lot of fun to Home Assistant.

433 Mhz hardware can extend your home automation.

433 Mhz Radio Transmitters

433 Mhz radio transmitters are available everywhere and they are usually very inexpensive. With a little bit of programming we can make them do anything we want.

How to Implement AVR Timer Interrupts in C for Atmel Microcontrollers

Timer interrupts are an excellent way of having your AVR do something at a given interval.

If you have to move massive amounts of data, then you should be thinking about Robocopy and rsync.

How to Move Massive Amounts of Data Safely and Efficiently

If you're dealing with a large amount of data, you need to make sure you're moving it safely and efficiently. Here are some tips on how to do just that.

How to Lighten an Image in C#

In order to lighten an image in C# you need to look at each pixel one at a time and increase it's red, green, and blue values.

AVR Port Output in C

Port output on an AVR microcontroller is very flexible. We show you how to configure each register.

How to Create a WinAVR C Skeleton File

If you are New To C then you can consider this a crash course introduction to the language.

How To Read Schematics

Those pictures are called a schematic. A schematic is a picture representation of what we are talking about in electronics.

How to compile ncmpcpp on CentOs 8

If you are new to compiling applications on Linux then this can be a bit daunting the first time you do it.

You can see that the MIDI data generated in Ableton Live flows into the USB port of an Arduino, where it is used to control solenoids.

MIDI Controlled Solenoids with Arduino and Ableton Live - Part 3

This is the 3rd and final part in a 3 part series about how to control solenoids using Ableton Live and an Arduino.

What are Transistors and How do They Work?

With the transistor we introduce the first 3 legged device. Transistors come in many varieties, shapes and sizes.

AVR Port Input Logic

In this guide we will write a program in C that makes some decisions based on the state of input pins.

Save png

How to Save a PNG File in C#

This guide will walk you through the steps required to save an Image or Bitmap to disc in the PNG format and allow you to specify the compression quality.

Resistors in Parallel

Learn how to calculate the equivalent resistance of two resistors when they are wired in parallel.

What Is A Circuit

In general, you will hear the word used to describe what a schematic shows. Most projects are a circuit and most schematics are a circuit.